Spike Jonze had been working as a music video director before making this non-dialogue short short. Jonze is now best known for his features (Being Jon Malkovich, Where The Wild Things Are) but continues to make shorts and music videos as well as producing the Jackass series and its spin-off films. Plagiarised in the feautre film, Lion, How They Get There is a simple comic tale that must have required a large budget to pull off!
The short comedy Fred, a fantastic computer animation, is a finalist in the current competition. Fred is a short short that tells the story of two ingenious mice, a wedge of cheese and a feline called Fred. The highly-skilled mice come up with a cunning plan to get past the sleeping Fred but they unfortunately wake him. Fred mistakes their attempts to bypass him as an invitation to dance. And Fred has some moves!
Sociel Security by Peter Smith was a finalist in the very first competition in 2011 and won the award for best animation at the reed.co.uk short film competition. It is a very simple idea very well executed, with a low-key, dry, and rather British, sense of humour. It is narrated by the newcomer to an office job while a series of images depict his words with amusing and ever-increasing complexity.
How To Break Up With Your Girlfriend is one of the series of animations enttiled Tales Of Mere Existance, by comic animator Lev Yilmaz and originally started in 2002. How To Break Up Your Girlfriend is one of my favourites and, like most, the comedy comes from the fact that it cuts excruciatingly close to the bone, saying what many of us are too afraid to admit. This, of course, is base upon which many great stand-up comics build their routines!